Today’s federal indictment of former House speaker Sal DiMasi fills out the ignominious trifecta many had been anticipating for several months: three straight Massachusetts House speakers indicted on charges related to activities in office.The case against DiMasi, laid out in this 33-page indictment, alleges brazen acts of corruption in which the then-speaker lined his pockets with payments that were a reward for DiMasi using his powerful post to steer a multimillion dollar state contract to a Canadian software company. 

DiMasi, along with three co-defendants, will have to answer to serious criminal charges in court. 

For his former House colleagues, today’s developments put an exclamation mark on the charge leveled in the current issue of CommonWealth that they have become unquestioning functionaries of the House leader. In January, DiMasi was reelected speaker by an overwhelming vote of Democratic lawmakers, despite serious questions hanging over his head related to the software deal as well as his involvement in ticket resale legislation, including a statement from Attorney General Martha Coakley that directly challenged the truthfulness of DiMasi’s claims regarding the ticket resale bill. From my CommonWealth story:

“The fact that virtually every self-professed ‘good government’ Democrat voted to reelect DiMasi just days after the attorney general shredded his credibility was, to be kind, an embarrassment,” says Jim Braude, the one-time liberal activist who now hosts an NECN television news program and co-hosts a radio show on WTKK-FM. “The sense was, ‘Unless he’s indicted, convicted, and jailed, he’s our man.’ I’m not troubled as much by DiMasi’s self-delusions as I am by how utterly compliant legislators have become. They just get in line.”